Rise and Shine

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Today:

10:0: President Obama delivers a statement on the Oklahoma tornados

Not sure if this is going ahead:

11:0: President Obama and VP Biden meet with DREAMers whose parents are in the country illegally and “who are directly affected by our broken immigration system”.

12:30: Jay Carney briefs the press

5:30: VP Biden delivers remarks at a reception hosted by the DNC in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month at the American Institute of Architects

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Best way to help tornado victims is to donate to the Red Cross at redcross.org or text REDCROSS to 90999. #okwx

— Red Cross Oklahoma (@redcrossokc) May 20, 2013

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Wh Official: Damage assessment teams have I-pads at the ready so that Oklahoma victims can sign up for federal assistance/grants on site.

— Kristen Welker (@kwelkernbc) May 21, 2013

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White House statement: “…. Overnight, the President approved a Major Disaster Deceleration for Oklahoma, making federal funding available to support affected individuals, as well as additional federal assistance to support immediate response and recovery efforts.

“This morning the President will receive a briefing in the Oval Office on the response by Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Lisa Monaco, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Deputy Chief of Staff Alyssa Mastromonaco and other senior members of the President’s response team. …

“At the President’s direction, FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate is traveling to Oklahoma this morning to ensure all Federal resources are supporting our state, local, and tribal partners in life saving and safety operations including search and rescue.

“FEMA has been supporting the state’s response since Sunday. At the request of the state, FEMA deployed a liaison to the state emergency operations center Sunday night.”

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Wanting to offset costs of relief to Oklahoma with budget offsets is heinous. It is literally sick.

— William K. Wolfrum (@Wolfrum) May 21, 2013

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Steve Benen: …. Ordinarily, so soon after a disaster of this magnitude, discussions about political agendas and ideologies are put on hold, which is why it came as a surprise when one of Oklahoma’s U.S. senators staked out a far-right position on federal disaster relief just five hours after the storm hit…..

I’ve seen many note overnight that Coburn is at least consistent ….. but while consistently is welcome, it doesn’t change the questions about unnecessary callousness…..

More here

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Oklahoma Senator won’t support tornado relief w/o budget cuts.He voted for billions in Iraq War funding w/o cuts.thkpr.gs/13EyOp7

— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) May 21, 2013

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Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s resident Fact Denier (who so brilliantly agreed with Darrell Issa when he said an “act of terror” is not a “terrorist attack”) excelled himself today – he gave ‘Three Pinocchios’ to White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer for stating the facts: that the Benghazi emails were doctored in an attempt to smear the President.

Seriously.

So, his problem is with Pfeiffer, not with those who doctored the emails or the reporters who used them for their ‘exclusives’.

There are too many ‘highlights’ to choose from, here are two:

“….. the reporters involved have indicated they were told by their sources that these were summaries, taken from notes of e-mails that could not be kept.”

So, why did Jon Karl repeatedly imply that he had seen the original emails?

“Despite Pfeiffer’s claim of political skullduggery, we see little evidence that much was at play here besides imprecise wordsmithing or editing errors by journalists.”

“… imprecise wordsmithing or editing errors.”

Oh boy, nooooooooo words.

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Rise and Shine

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Today (all times ET):

11:0: President Obama departs the White House

1:35: Arrives Des Moines, Iowa

2:20: Delivers remarks at a campaign event at Living History Farms, Urbandale, Iowa

4:25: Departs Des Moines

5:10: Arrives Sioux City, Iowa

7:30: Delivers remarks at a campaign event at Morningside College, Sioux City

9:20: Departs Sioux City

10:40: Arrives Denver

(Will double-check the schedule, not 100% sure about the times)

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Des Moines Register: Barack Obama’s election-year effort to rock the vote in Iowa continues this afternoon in Urbandale, where he’ll literally be rockin’ the suburbs.

The president’s second visit to the state this week will resemble a summer music festival, treating an outdoor crowd at Living History Farms not only to a political speech but also performances by indie band the National and alternative-rock hero Chris Cornell.

More here (thanks Dotster)

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NYT: Republicans in Texas and Florida have been in the vanguard of the pernicious, widespread efforts to suppress voting by Hispanics and blacks. Fortunately, federal courts are seeing these efforts for what they are: a variation on the racist laws that disenfranchised millions before those tactics were outlawed by the Voting Rights Act.

A three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday unanimously rejected Texas’s voter ID law, which required court approval to take effect. The court described the law, known as SB 14, as “the most stringent in the country.”

More here

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Rise and Shine

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10:15: The President will deliver remarks at the Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security at the Ronald Reagan Building, DC

11:00: Holds a bilateral meeting with President Francois Hollande of France

12:30: VP Biden attends a campaign event in Wilmington, Delaware

6:00: PBO departs the White House en route Camp David

6:30: Arrives at Camp David

7:30: Greets G8 leaders

7:50: Hosts a welcome reception for G8 leaders

8:00: Hosts a working dinner for G8 leaders

Saturday: PBO will remain at Camp David for the G-8 Summit. Later on Saturday, he will travel to Chicago, Illinois, where he will welcome NATO allies and partners to his hometown for the NATO Summit on May 20-21. The First Lady will travel to Chicago with the President.

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USA Today: President Obama will announce a new initiative Friday morning designed to lift up to 50 million African people from poverty through private investments in agricultural projects on the nation’s poorest continent.

The effort, to be unveiled as leaders of the world’s most powerful nations convene at Camp David for a two-day summit, follows an earlier Obama initiative to generate $22 billion in government assistance for undernourished Africans that was announced at the 2009 Group of 8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy.

Obama plans to announce his plan at an all-day event on African food security in Washington, then travel to Camp David where he will host the G8 summit later Friday and Saturday.

More here

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Glenn Kessler (Washington Post): “We were able to help create over 100,000 jobs. On the president’s watch, about 100,000 jobs were lost in the auto industry and auto dealers and auto manufacturers, so he’s hardly one to point a finger.” — Mitt Romney, interview on Hot Air, May 16, 2011

The 100,000 jobs is back! The presumptive GOP nominee all but stopped mentioning he created 100,000 in the private sector after we declared in January that claim was untenable and unproven…..

….. The logic there escapes us. Romney appears to be saying it is okay to count jobs created after he left Bain, but it’s not okay to count jobs lost after he left Bain.

…. So Romney gets a “repeat offender” award …. But let’s also look at his claim that 100,000 jobs were lost in the auto industry “on the president’s watch.” That’s a new one.

….. Romney’s remarks make little sense …. his assertion that 100,000 jobs have been lost in the auto industry “on the president’s watch” does not add up.

Yes, there were some painful cuts in the auto industry at the start of Obama’s presidency, largely because tough choices had to be made. One could argue whether those choices were necessary or effective, but the bottom line is clear: No matter how you slice it, jobs overall have grown substantially in the auto industry under Obama….

Full article here

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ThinkProgress

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Morning everyone 😉

rise and shine

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Steve Benen: We talked yesterday about why the 2002 Olympic games, run by Mitt Romney, has become an awkward political story for the Republican presidential hopeful. To help drive the point home, consider this clip, uncovered by the estimable James Carter, of Romney discussing the role of taxpayer money to support the games.

….. Not surprisingly, he concluded that the “massive investment” is absolutely worth it. Indeed, in the same clip, Romney went on to thank Utah’s congressional delegation – which was made up entirely of Republican lawmakers at the time – for being “enormously helpful” in securing so many tax dollars for the 2002 Olympics.

More here

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Greg Sargent: Another day, another Romney truth-stretch: Glenn Kessler knocks down the ubiquitous Romney-GOP talking point that Obama pledged that his stimulus plan would hold unemployment below eight percent.

Special bonus dissembling: As Kessler notes, the info to disprove this one is actually available on the Romney Web site…

More here

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McClatchy

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Morning everyone

rise and shine

Mediaite

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Greg Sargent (Washington Post): Romney’s claims about jobs continue to crumble: A colleague emails: “Can you remember another time a candidate did as much damage to himself as Romney has done in the last 24 hours? I cannot.”

In that amount of time, two things happened. First, Romney has provided Dems with the perfect fodder for misleading but potentially devastating attacks on his primary vulnerability – his corporate past, which Dems will paint as emblematic of the predatory and unfettered capitalism that has produced untold economic misery for millions.

And second, the national political press – and even some leading Republicans and conservatives – have come around to the conclusion that the foundation of the whole case driving his candidacy, his career as an alleged “job creator” at Bain Capital, is based on a series of claims that are entirely untenable.

Here’s the latest, from Glenn Kessler, who weighs in with an epic fact check of Romney’s claim that he created over 100,000 jobs at Bain, and concludes that it’s unsupportable on every level…..

More here

Glenn Kessler

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Greg Sargent: Conservative doubts rising about Obama: A key dynamic to watch: The assault on Romney’s Bain years is causing rising alarm in conservative circles. Jonah Goldberg gives voice to the worries, suggesting we now know that Romney really may not be as electable in a general election against Obama as we keep hearing.

Key footnote: Goldberg suggests that rising doubts about Romney’s electability may be what triggers a brokered convention.

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The front page of the New Hampshire Union Leader website today:

😉

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Morning everyone 😉

rise and shine

Greg Sargent: Mitt Romney’s serial equivocations: This one will be a big deal today. Remember when Romney attacked Newt Gingrich last week for taking the humane position that longtime illegal immigrants shouldn’t be deported, even as the Romney campaign refused to say whether he thought they should be removed?

It now turns out that Romney took an almost identical position to Gingrich’s in a 2006 interview with Bloomberg, claiming that millions of immigrants “are not going to be rounded up and box-carred out.”

More here

Greg Sargent: And the stimulus fact check of the day: Glenn Kessler demolishes a whole series of GOP talking points about economic growth, taxation, and the stimulus. Kessler also debunks the ubiquitous claim that the fact that there are fewer jobs today than when Obama took office proves the stimulus was a failure:

    ….. that assumes the full force of the stimulus took effect immediately, which is absurd. The recession had not ended yet and job losses continued for several months before the stimulus kicked in. While different studies disagree on the impact of the stimulus, most conclude it had some impact – and none say it “killed jobs”.

We clear on this now?

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Morning everyone 😉

lies, lies, lies…..

Glenn Kessler (Washington Post): Another lengthy presidential debate, and more bogus claims and counterclaims to check…..

Rick Perry: “I got lobbied on this issue. I got lobbied by a 31-year-old young lady who had stage-four cervical cancer. I spent a lot of time with her. She came by my office. She talked to me about this program…..”

Perry is being misleading when he discusses his controversial vaccine order. He makes it sound like he was lobbied by a cancer patient, not his former chief of staff working for a drug company, and that’s why he made his decision.

But he has the story backwards. He met Heather Burcham, a 31-year-old woman who died from cervical cancer after contracting HPV, after he signed the mandate ordering vaccinations for children.

Perry: “When we had the opportunity to sell India the upgraded F- 16s, we chose not to do that.”

Perry gets this story backwards. He may have been focused on the F-16 because it is built by Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, Texas, but India made the decision to not buy F-16s and instead go with another military jet. It was not the U.S. choice. The Obama administration actually lobbied hard for the sale, and the aerospace firm had assured India that its F-16s would be “much more advanced” than the fighters provided to Pakistan.

Romney: “The president went about this all wrong. He went around the world and apologized for America….”.

Regarding the supposed apology, we have repeatedly called this out as a Four-Pinocchio falsehood. A careful review of all of Obama’s overseas statements found that they had been taken out of context or had been misquoted.

More here

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Bill Kristol: The Weekly Standard’s official reaction to last night’s Republican presidential debate: Yikes.

Reading the reactions of thoughtful commentators after the stage emptied, talking with conservative policy types and GOP political operatives later last evening and this morning, we know we’re not alone. Most won’t express publicly just how horrified – or at least how demoralized – they are……

The e-mails flooding into our inbox during the evening were less guarded. Early on, we received this missive from a bright young conservative: “I’m watching my first GOP debate…and WE SOUND LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE!!!!” ….

…. no front-runner in a presidential field has ever, we imagine, had as weak a showing as Rick Perry. It was close to a disqualifying two hours for him. And Mitt Romney remains, when all is said and done, a technocratic management consultant whose one term as governor produced Romneycare….

…. we do ask (again!), with a month left before filing deadlines: Is that all there is?

More here – but be warned, it’s right wing territory 😉

fact-checking

Glenn Kessler (Washington Post):

“Obamacare is killing jobs. We know that from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.” – Bachmann

Bachmann won’t give up on this factoid, even though we debunked it seven months ago and said it was worth three Pinocchios. It’s just not correct, and remains a perfect example of how politicians twist the facts….

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“He only went along with the Libyan mission because the United Nations told him to.” – Santorum

Actually, Santorum has it backwards. The United States requested the U.N. resolution to gain international backing for the NATO-led intervention in the Libyan uprising.

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“The idea that we would put Americans’ economy in jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet to me is just – is nonsense … just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said, here is the fact – Galileo got outvoted for a spell.” – Perry

We previously awarded Perry Four Pinocchios for his comments suggesting scientists were increasingly saying climate change was a fiction. We will note he repeatedly did not answer the question at the debate about whether he could name a scientists he thought was credible on the issue….

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“In our state, our plan covered 8 percent of the people, the uninsured. His plan has taken over a 100 percent of the people.” – Romney

It is simply not true, no matter how often candidates say that the Obama health care law represents socialized medicine or took over one-sixth of the economy … Obama’s law was modeled closely on the law passed by Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts – an inconvenient fact that Romney tries hard to run away from. His comparison here is misleading, since both plans try to deal with the problem of the uninsured by requiring an individual mandate.

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“As a matter of fact, what he’s done is, he’s said in fact to Israel that they need to shrink back to their indefensible 1967 borders.” – Bachmann

Obama never said this. The president in May did give a controversial speech, in which he said the de facto border of 1967 should be a starting point for negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, with agreed swaps of territory. A few days later, he further clarified his comments to make clear he was not saying the lines should be Israel’s border, to the point that he was thanked by the Israeli prime minister in a speech to Congress. We’ve given Bachmann Four Pinocchios for making a similar claim in the past.

More here